The Gourds Keep On Keeping On

"Literate roots party music" is how Kevin "Shinyribs" Russell describes The Gourds: "We're Bill Burroughs meets Jerry Lee Lewis at the funeral of Robert Johnson on the Millennium Falcon piloted by Joe Strummer and Neil Young."

The Gourds have been around since the summer of 1994, when members of Picket Line Coyotes and The Grackles came together. And though the band may not travel in a psychedelic bus followed by a legion of tie-dyed, acid-dropping fans, the Austin outfit comes as close as any band to The Grateful Dead's traveling-circus tradition. Much like Fred Eaglesmith's FredHeads, a growing legion of fanatics travel far and wide following the band.

For Russell, a recent Gourds show at Austin's Armadillo Christmas Bazaar provides an example of the band's fan base's jumbled diversity.

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The Gourds play Saturday, December 12,at Lola's Sixth, Fort Worth.

"I saw two fans sitting near each other," he recalls. "One was a wrinkled Wiccan hippie woman who lives in the trees outside of Bastrop; the other was a game warden with Texas Parks & Wildlife."

"We've had Matthew McConaughey drunk as a skunk in the front row," he adds, "and Clayton Williams dancing with Modesta to 'Gin and Juice.' We're on George [W.] Bush's iPod, and we're favorites of old-school Microsoft employees in Seattle. People bring young children to shows who know all the words, and they bring their grandparents to dance with us. We're wholesome and subversive, populist pagans without a cause."

The Gourds' current lineup solidified in 1999 when former Uncle Tupelo/Wilco sideman Max Johnston was added. The band's ninth album, Haymaker!, dropped in January. Discussing the new record, Russell is uncharacteristically unpretentious for someone who is supposed to be touting art.

"We had no ideas about direction, just the knowledge that we needed to make a record and get it out," says Russell, who, along with bassist Jimmy Smith, writes the bulk of The Gourds' material.

Haymaker!, he says, is "another brilliant, budget-minded record from this band that knows how to make good low-budget records.

"That's all we've ever done. If we were ever given a real budget to work with, we might be able to realize our greatest potential," Russell surmises. "Or we might just implode."

He describes the album as having a "raw, live feel to it that we haven't captured before. And the drums sound great, which is so important, but so difficult to achieve."

Drummer Keith Langford agrees: "We were loose, and that always helps. We played a friend's wedding, took that money and did some basic tracks the weekend after. There was zero pressure because it wasn't anyone else's money or time."

There was also little pressure from the Americana scene this time around.

"We never liked that scene," Russell says. "From the moment I saw the first issue of No Depression, I was suspect of that shit. For all of the 'alternative' lip service, it's usually just low-budget versions of the same crap the majors are churning out. Few in the scene are really doing anything with much energy or inspiration. I generally hate it.

"[But] I love playing with these men," Russell continues. "It is fucking fun. Obviously, we have had a longer run than most bands. We've seen 'em come and go. Some, like Drive-By Truckers, have passed us on the road. Most have crashed and burned; Slobberbone and Hazeldine, remember them? And some, like Old 97's, left for the bright lights, then came back home."

Russell attributes The Gourds' longevity to poetic songs that appeal to a fan base that he proudly describes as "hyper-literate, passionate humanists swimming in a pool of lager and lust, covered in a lonesome crust. They are city mice and country mice who like their smoke and spice and their beer on ice, hedonistic foodies, esoteric partiers, paranoid pilgrims, hubristic Trotskyite gnostics, Cartesian alcoholic minimalists, auto-erotic constitutionalists and other natural nonconformists of all shapes and sizes."